Garrett Kelly showed good composure on the ball to orchestrate play with Sam Mvemba, Craig Jeakins and Jonathan Nzengo looking lively through the channels.

But when Boro couldn’t make their most exciting spells of play count, a wonderfully crafted through ball on the counter-attack from Blues substitute Ryan Reed found Kieran Hughes-Mason who latched on perfectly with acres of space to run into.

With only the keeper to beat, Hughes-Mason rounded Leyton Orient loanee Arthur Janata in the Boro goal and slotted home for his fifth league goal of the season. With only 10 minutes left to play and the game all but dead and buried Romford showed great spirit to try and claw a goal back, but Chris Taylor could only put his effort straight into Ollie Bowles’ hands in what capped off a solid defensive display for Barking centre halves JJ Da Cruz and Hussain Jaffa.

Blues boss Justin Gardner said: “If I’m honest I don’t think we were great today. First half I think we were slightly the better team but for me Romford were definitely the better team second half.

Ryan Reed on the attack for Barking against Romford (pic Terry Gilbert)

“We were fortunate. I don’t think Ollie had too many saves to make but we looked like we were happy with the one goal and Romford really set out to try and get back into it.

“They will probably be gutted that they didn’t get a goal in the second half and we sort of hit them on the counter attack for our second goal.”

Romford boss Paul Martin added: “In all fairness it wasn’t good enough. The first half performance wasn’t good enough and the second half performance, I thought we played a lot better and we forced them back, but you can’t say that when you come away losing 2-0.”

“Because we didn’t perform in the first half, they were supposed to have loads of energy because they had nothing to show for the first 45 minutes.

“The second half. We played some better football but at the end of the day we’ve been beaten by our own mistakes again.”

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining,” so the saying goes. So if some warm weather is making your conservatory uninhabitable, think about replacing its roof with a flat one and adding a roof lantern instead.

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